The Basics:
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Exhibition title: Post Industrious
- Artists: WM FitzPatrick and Barry Phipps
- Dates: 16 November 2013 through 21 December 2013
- Venue: Manifold, 4426 N. Ravenswood Avenue, Chicago, 60640
- Hours: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 1-6pm or by appointment
- Opening reception: Saturday, 16 November 2013, 7-10 pm
The Exhibition:
Opening Saturday, 16 November 2013, Manifold presents “Post Industrious” a
two-man show featuring the works of Chicago-based artist and designer WM
FitzPatrick and Iowa City-based photographer Barry Phipps. Organized by
independent curator, Franck Mercurio, the exhibition addresses how current
economic realities, environmental concerns, and an awareness of recent history
influence design and art making in the post-industrial Midwest.
WM FitzPatrick’s pieces blur the line between sculpture and furniture. He
eschews new materials and mass production in favor of one-offs fabricated from
salvaged materials. Created from the detritus of the past, FitzPatrick’s pieces are
new constructs, yet retain the history of the original objects from which they were
made.
The photographs of Barry Phipps’ “Iowa Series” reflect the architectural and
typographic forms of small town America. Rather than take pictures of Iowa,
Phipps mines Iowa for material to make images. His rigorous compositions
employ line, texture, and color to reveal underlying formal structures.
Together, FitzPatrick’s sculptures and Phipps’ photographs create a dialogue of
thought-provoking dichotomies: urban/rural, object/image, and design/art. Their
work reflects something of what it means to make art—to be “industrious”—in our
contemporary, post-industrial moment.
Manifold will hold an opening reception—free to the public—on Saturday, 16
November 2013 from 7 to 10 pm.
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WM FitzPatrick’s sculpture and furniture reflects his education at the Illinois
Institute of Technology, whose design school is grounded in the Bauhaus
principles of Mies van der Rohe and László Moholy-Nagy. Straddling the line
between art and design, FitzPatrick describes his works as “performing a kind of
balancing act: is it furniture or is it sculpture?” His pieces are unique one-offs
made from salvaged materials that are often left “as is” to better retain the history
of the original artifact.
Barry Phipps studied photography, video, and painting at the Kansas City Art
Institute, from which he graduated with a B.F.A. in 1990. “The images I present
are rare moments when the past, the present, man-made landscapes, and
natural elements collide into a cohesive, simplified, and mostly minimal
composition…I’m always ready to frame-in what’s important and filter-out the rest
to create something new and engaging from a momentary experience.”
Franck Mercurio is an independent exhibition consultant, curator, writer, and
editor based in Chicago with degrees from the University of Cincinnati in
architecture and Northwestern University in art history. Mercurio worked for eight
years in the Exhibitions Department of the Field Museum before starting his own
consulting business, Mercurio-Exhibits. He is a frequent contributor to Time Out
Chicago and has served as a guest editor for the magazine’s Art & Design
section.
Press Contact:
Elizabeth Fiersten
773.754.7186
info@manifoldchicago.com
